The whole game is music themed. All three main party members have their own music instrument. A lot of musical themed games are mostly good at integrating the combat with music. This game is the opposite and is really good at making you feel like a musician outside of combat. The cast collects new songs for their repertoires (they are all really fun). They practice those songs on their journey, performing for the public on numerous occasions. No other game i played focused on this part of being a musician as much as this one does. To bad that part of the story goes to the background in the second half when it when it becomes less slice of life and more a world encasing main plot (like we expect from Legend of Heroes).

Speaking of the main plot, The blue tribe that we saw parts of in the last two games gets a lot of focus here. We get a full picture of the whole history of of the world. The civilization became advanced with musical spells, and how it doomed itself also had to do with sound. The witch island and the last boss from 'the prophecy of the moonlight witch' connects back to here. You also meet a lot of characters from the tear of vermillion game. I'm not going into more detail because of spoilers, i just say the blue tribe is the main connection between the games and the payoff for playing the other games first is definitely there. It was written as the connecting part between the other games, and there are no loose ends at the end of the trilogy.

The game uses the save files of the other games for some optional fanservice stuff like meeting all the characters from the other games, and you can play parts of the other games with the new party. This chronological anomaly makes zero sense and serves no purpose, but it's cute to see save files of earlier games in a franchise having usability in handheld games that aren't named 'Pokémon'. Not many games did that back then.

This is not the most approachable game of the LoH series by a long shot, but that's the story of this whole trilogy. It's not helped by the stiff translation, but at least the language of melodic music is universal. It's certainly the most unique entry in the way it presents itself and uses music throughout every aspect of the game. As a device in the story, the world-building, the puzzles, the lore of the whole trilogy and even in the slice of life parts. Also in the combat where you can combine music spells, but it doesn't save the boring combat system by a long shot. Still, for me the trilogy ended on a positive note (couldn't help the pun).